I thought it would be a good idea to give everyone a little bit of perspective for my first day on a strict schedule. Just as the days spent planning it all have been difficult, putting it all into practice is proving a challenge as well. I am happy to say that it is still very do-able though! That's not to say that it has all gone as planned, without a hitch; apparently, there are several areas where I probably should have planned better. I felt like I was in a time crunch, and that if I could just get the schedule into action as-is, I could modify it better as I went. And today has been perfect for that! I am learning from every little bump in the road and have confidence to adjust it into a better routine tomorrow.
So here is how my day has gone so far (even though it is only 1 p.m.):
I got up at 7 a.m. Not promptly at 7, but more lazily and with great reluctance. I am not an early riser by nature, so this in itself has probably been the hardest part of the day. I knew that if I could just tip myself over the edge of the mattress and drag myself to the shower, I'd be good to go. On that note, I CANNOT wake up without a shower. Coffee helps, but nothing wakes me up like a nice, long, hot shower. It's getting that far that I had trouble with. Thankfully, Josh gets up at the same time, so he was able to prod me out of bed. He even started a pot of coffee to help lure me out. It was very sweet of him! But anyways, I had plans to get up an hour before my kids and shower, get dressed, pray, and read the bible. Yeah.
Well, Rowan woke up and the baby did too, so I nursed the baby back to sleep and told Rowan she must lay down. Thankfully, they both fell asleep and I was able to get up and start getting ready.
I don't need to tell you about showering - you already know how to do that I hope.
I don't have a bible (don't ask...it's a bitter story with an unhappy ending) so I sat down to my laptop and resisted the urge to click on Facebook. I instead googled for an online Bible, and found bible.com. Crazy, no? The cool part is that I had no clue what I should read or anything because, if I'm being honest to the point of incrimination, I have never really devoted time to reading my bible or praying. I know, I know. You don't even have to say anything. The conviction is immense. But all those people you know that are those perfect-seeming christians that always remember to pray before panicking, the ones that can recite wayyy more of the bible than you ever could, the ones that seem to have everything all figured out and are comforted in God's word.....they all began at square one. Even those that are "raised in church" have to, at some point, consciously turn (or turn back) to Christ. So I'm turning from being lukewarm and trying to better myself, and this is my "square one."
Moving on.
The cool part is that I had no clue where to begin, but they have a daily and a proverbs devotional at bible.org. So I read those, then I remembered last night what had popped into my head; Elijah. Now, there is no book of Elijah (believe me, I checked: I tend to think bible names are bible books frequently) but upon searching, I found some great scripture that spoke to my heart. I moved on to Titus just because I like it, and finished reading and praying just in time to wake up the kids. I felt so peaceful about beginning the day. It is crazy what a difference it makes to A) wake up before your kids and have an hour of quiet, and B) pray and take in God's word prior to starting your day. I think this is a lot of the idea behind emphasis in the bible to rising before the sun. It is a peaceful, quiet time for prayer and meditation that even Jesus himself found fitting in Mark 1:35.
At 8, I started waking and dressing the children one by one. They were all lined up at the breakfast table, ready to eat by 8:30. I felt like so euphoric with success at this point that I forgot to eat breakfast.
Chores did not go well at first, seeing as how my kids are not used to spending 30 minutes focusing on one task at hand. But it picked up near the end and we were able to completely clean their bedroom, the rec room (formerly known as the toy room), the living room, and the hallway.
Devotional time is a sad, sad matter. I went into it knowing full well that I was clueless, and spent the better portion of our time trying to find something online that would help me out. This would be an excellent example of one of the things I should have planned out before now. Take the time I spent being clueless and factor in some additional minutes for the internet connection doing a shoddy job of rendering me my search results and you have a highly disappointing devotional time. Somewhere in the last few minutes (yep...down to the wire) I found an awesome site that explains parts of the bible in children's terms, and has just enough illustrating to keep the kids' focus.
http://www.christiananswers.net/godstory/creation1.html
This will hopefully hold up until their picture bible arrives in the mail.
The next bits of the day were relatively uneventful; I let the kids have computer time while I just wrestled around with Royal, then we had school time where I helped Dash while Rowan used her workbook and Royal got to learn what it's like to play independently. Then came art, and I showed Royal how to actually write on paper - and it was hilarious. We followed that with music time, and I taught Rowan and Dash "If you're happy and you know it" and "This little light of mine." I have a sing-a-long with these and others, but for the most part, we just sat on a blanket on the floor and sang and danced together. The kids thought these songs, coupled with the "moves", were so much fun! I felt dorky but the kids loved it so I guess that's what music time will be like. I plan on teaching them instruments (whatever we can make music with) and dancing too. When the kids started to lose interest I just turned on the songs on my laptop and the kids screamed the words and danced on the blanket while I moved on to lunch.
We had peanut butter sandwiches and milk because I'm such a gourmet chef. The highlight here was that it was Royal's first *official* peanut butter sandwich and milk. He has stolen and found peanut butter sandwiches before, so I know he is not allergic, but this is the first time he had any on purpose. I spread it super thin, then smashed it almost flat, then cut it into tiny pieces. I am starting him on milk, a tiny bit at a time, since he is just shy of 11 months.
Lunch conversation was minimal, since the children were still echoing music time with "if you're happy and you know it, shout Amen," and then screaming it at the top of their little lungs. At one point Rowan asked me why some people call coffee "A cup of joe" and I said I would google it; we learned that it is speculated that it is derived from Joseph Daniels, the secretary of the Navy in 1914, abolishing alcohol and having the troops drink coffee instead. We pondered this for the remainder of lunch time.
For reading time I continued where we left off in Matilda. I was able to get through two chapters with only two timeouts, 1 nose-in-the-corner, and 25 threats of napping without a story. I let the kids nap in the rec room because I want to wean them off of movies at nap time. I got the baby to sleep as I sat down to blog this. I've had to get up three or four times to shoo children back to bed and to re-nurse the baby to sleep, but I've gotten quite a bit written anyhow.
Now I'm moving on to half an hour of reading my book quietly and eating my homemade hummus...or what's left of it.
So here is how my day has gone so far (even though it is only 1 p.m.):
I got up at 7 a.m. Not promptly at 7, but more lazily and with great reluctance. I am not an early riser by nature, so this in itself has probably been the hardest part of the day. I knew that if I could just tip myself over the edge of the mattress and drag myself to the shower, I'd be good to go. On that note, I CANNOT wake up without a shower. Coffee helps, but nothing wakes me up like a nice, long, hot shower. It's getting that far that I had trouble with. Thankfully, Josh gets up at the same time, so he was able to prod me out of bed. He even started a pot of coffee to help lure me out. It was very sweet of him! But anyways, I had plans to get up an hour before my kids and shower, get dressed, pray, and read the bible. Yeah.
Well, Rowan woke up and the baby did too, so I nursed the baby back to sleep and told Rowan she must lay down. Thankfully, they both fell asleep and I was able to get up and start getting ready.
I don't need to tell you about showering - you already know how to do that I hope.
I don't have a bible (don't ask...it's a bitter story with an unhappy ending) so I sat down to my laptop and resisted the urge to click on Facebook. I instead googled for an online Bible, and found bible.com. Crazy, no? The cool part is that I had no clue what I should read or anything because, if I'm being honest to the point of incrimination, I have never really devoted time to reading my bible or praying. I know, I know. You don't even have to say anything. The conviction is immense. But all those people you know that are those perfect-seeming christians that always remember to pray before panicking, the ones that can recite wayyy more of the bible than you ever could, the ones that seem to have everything all figured out and are comforted in God's word.....they all began at square one. Even those that are "raised in church" have to, at some point, consciously turn (or turn back) to Christ. So I'm turning from being lukewarm and trying to better myself, and this is my "square one."
Moving on.
The cool part is that I had no clue where to begin, but they have a daily and a proverbs devotional at bible.org. So I read those, then I remembered last night what had popped into my head; Elijah. Now, there is no book of Elijah (believe me, I checked: I tend to think bible names are bible books frequently) but upon searching, I found some great scripture that spoke to my heart. I moved on to Titus just because I like it, and finished reading and praying just in time to wake up the kids. I felt so peaceful about beginning the day. It is crazy what a difference it makes to A) wake up before your kids and have an hour of quiet, and B) pray and take in God's word prior to starting your day. I think this is a lot of the idea behind emphasis in the bible to rising before the sun. It is a peaceful, quiet time for prayer and meditation that even Jesus himself found fitting in Mark 1:35.
At 8, I started waking and dressing the children one by one. They were all lined up at the breakfast table, ready to eat by 8:30. I felt like so euphoric with success at this point that I forgot to eat breakfast.
Chores did not go well at first, seeing as how my kids are not used to spending 30 minutes focusing on one task at hand. But it picked up near the end and we were able to completely clean their bedroom, the rec room (formerly known as the toy room), the living room, and the hallway.
Devotional time is a sad, sad matter. I went into it knowing full well that I was clueless, and spent the better portion of our time trying to find something online that would help me out. This would be an excellent example of one of the things I should have planned out before now. Take the time I spent being clueless and factor in some additional minutes for the internet connection doing a shoddy job of rendering me my search results and you have a highly disappointing devotional time. Somewhere in the last few minutes (yep...down to the wire) I found an awesome site that explains parts of the bible in children's terms, and has just enough illustrating to keep the kids' focus.
http://www.christiananswers.net/godstory/creation1.html
This will hopefully hold up until their picture bible arrives in the mail.
The next bits of the day were relatively uneventful; I let the kids have computer time while I just wrestled around with Royal, then we had school time where I helped Dash while Rowan used her workbook and Royal got to learn what it's like to play independently. Then came art, and I showed Royal how to actually write on paper - and it was hilarious. We followed that with music time, and I taught Rowan and Dash "If you're happy and you know it" and "This little light of mine." I have a sing-a-long with these and others, but for the most part, we just sat on a blanket on the floor and sang and danced together. The kids thought these songs, coupled with the "moves", were so much fun! I felt dorky but the kids loved it so I guess that's what music time will be like. I plan on teaching them instruments (whatever we can make music with) and dancing too. When the kids started to lose interest I just turned on the songs on my laptop and the kids screamed the words and danced on the blanket while I moved on to lunch.
We had peanut butter sandwiches and milk because I'm such a gourmet chef. The highlight here was that it was Royal's first *official* peanut butter sandwich and milk. He has stolen and found peanut butter sandwiches before, so I know he is not allergic, but this is the first time he had any on purpose. I spread it super thin, then smashed it almost flat, then cut it into tiny pieces. I am starting him on milk, a tiny bit at a time, since he is just shy of 11 months.
Lunch conversation was minimal, since the children were still echoing music time with "if you're happy and you know it, shout Amen," and then screaming it at the top of their little lungs. At one point Rowan asked me why some people call coffee "A cup of joe" and I said I would google it; we learned that it is speculated that it is derived from Joseph Daniels, the secretary of the Navy in 1914, abolishing alcohol and having the troops drink coffee instead. We pondered this for the remainder of lunch time.
For reading time I continued where we left off in Matilda. I was able to get through two chapters with only two timeouts, 1 nose-in-the-corner, and 25 threats of napping without a story. I let the kids nap in the rec room because I want to wean them off of movies at nap time. I got the baby to sleep as I sat down to blog this. I've had to get up three or four times to shoo children back to bed and to re-nurse the baby to sleep, but I've gotten quite a bit written anyhow.
Now I'm moving on to half an hour of reading my book quietly and eating my homemade hummus...or what's left of it.
Sounds VERY successful! Great job momma! If you want another resource for Bible time check out this site; http://ministry-to-children.com/ it's got loads of free printables and some really fun things to do with the Bible stories to make them more real and fun. I also like confessionsofahomeschooler.com for character studies which are pre-planned lessons! I just print the topics off and each day we read the next lesson. Let me know if you have trouble finding those on her site and I'll give you a more specific link. They're awesome! Again GOOD JOB! So cool to feel productive even just after breakfast. It's always such a great feeling to sit down at the table at 8:30 and already have stuff accomplished!
ReplyDelete